


Prince of Darkness, Judge of Pies

by halfeatenmoon



Category: The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Baking, Demon Summoning, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:38:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17152025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: "Who summons Morgoth, Judge of Souls?" the demon bellowed."Er." Cecily raised a shaky hand. "I did? Only it was an accident. And you seem to have dispatched our baking judge."Mary put a gentle hand on the demon's elbow. "Since Paul is now rather indisposed, would you care to judge the remainder of our bakes?"





	Prince of Darkness, Judge of Pies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



> Takes place in a fictional season of the show - with Mary, Mel and Sue still around and an original set of bakers.
> 
> Big thanks to Celuran for the brainstorming help, the idea that brought this whole fic together, and the beta job!

The only defense Cecily had, really, was that she messed up under the pressure.  
  
Before the Bake Off tent, she would have said that she did well under pressure. She was a nurse, for goodness' sake; high pressure and high stakes were part of her everyday life. And look, it was week four of the competition and she was still in the tent. She wasn’t doing that terribly. The problem was that that was the most anyone could say about her performance so far.  
  
In biscuit week, her signature sandwich biscuits had been acceptable, but too sweet; in cake week, her showstopper black forest gateau had been delicious, but the decoration was deemed not spectacular enough for the time allocated. Even in bread week, which she thought would be her strongest yet, she placed middle of the pack in the technical and her showstopper bread tower was a downright mess, even if her signature bagels had been some of the best. After bread in week three, she’d gone home and grimly admitted that her plans for week four’s baked custard tart signature were nowhere near spectacular enough, and went back to her kitchen to furiously bake the week away in search of something that could stun the judges.  
  
Her plan for a pineapple custard tart piped with chocolate was undoubtedly original, and something nobody would have tasted before. If she failed, at least people would remember who Cecily was after this week. It’s just that of course, this was one of those challenges where everything kept going wrong. The humidity in the tent was terrible today, making everyone’s pastry hard to work with. Her custard separated as soon as she mixed it with the pineapple the first time, and she had to start both the custard and the pineapple over again. By the time she had the tart in the oven, she was cutting it extremely fine to get her chocolate topping on. But she said this would have chocolate piping and damn it, she had to put up some chocolate. So she mixed the best chocolate piping she could while the tart was in the oven, rushed it to the freezer to chill with an eye on the clock, and pulled it out with thirty seconds to spare so she could squeeze as much chocolate as possible on in the last few seconds. When Sue counted down to “Time’s up!” Cecily had a bizarre looking mess of crisscrossing lines all over her tart with a wobbly circle around the edges but damn it, it was finished.  
  
She felt good about this for approximately two minutes. Then the judges were at her bench and Paul Hollywood’s dispassionate stare was trained on her tart, and she rather wanted to sink into the ground.  
  
“So,” Paul began.  
  
He didn’t follow it up with anything.  
  
Mary looked at her kindly. “Do you have much experience with piping?”  
  
“I practiced a bit at home.” Cecily tried to unclench her hands from each other. “I didn’t have much time today, though.”  
  
“Poor planning,” said Paul, gravely.  
  
That made Cecily’s hands clench again, this time into fists. The humidity as hardly her fault, and it had interfered with almost everyone’s bakes. What kind of fool held a baking competition in a tent in the middle of summer, anyway? But she bit her tongue. It was no use talking back to the judges, everyone knew that.  
  
“It’s a mess, frankly,” Paul continued. “Honestly it doesn’t look appealing at all. And pineapple, custard and chocolate?”  
  
Cecily flailed about for something to say, but the most she could come up with was, “I like the flavours. And I wanted to do something original.”  
  
“Well, it certainly is that. Somethings things are untested for a reason, though, Cecily.”  
  
Mel tried to soften it with “Well yes, because nobody’s tried it yet,” but it didn’t really help. When Paul made a show of his reluctance to even eat the thing, as he raised the knife to cut into it, Cecily muttered “well fuck you too” as quietly as she could under her breath.  
  
The next thing she knew there was an intense gush of wind through the tent, upsetting almost everyone’s equipment. In the eye of the windy vortex, where Paul had just put blade to custard, a glowing red figure slowly climbed from the cut in the tart, grabbed Paul Hollywood by the shirt, and threw him against the wall of the tent so hard that he ripped through it and landed twenty metres away on the lawn.  
  
The wind stopped immediately.  
  
The edges of the tear in the tent were smoking.  
  
Everyone was frozen but for one hardy first aider who crept out the back to check on Paul and then gave them a thumbs up.  
  
Sue’s hair was in disarray and her glasses askew, but she gathered herself together and held out her hand. “Well, hello there. Welcome to the Bake Off Tent. I’m Sue Perkins, and you are?”  
  
The demon ignored Sue’s hand and spread his wings, at which Sue looked visibly relieved.  
  
“I am Morgoth, the Judge of Souls,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it seemed to boom throughout the tent anyway, reverberating through walls and benches and making tarts shudder on their plates. “Who has summoned me to pass judgement on your people?”  
  
"Er." Cecily looked around at the tent full of stunned bakers, hosts and techies, all staring in shock. There was nothing else for it; she raised a shaky hand. "I did? Only it was an accident. I didn’t mean for you to, er, throw our judge."  
  
Morgoth glanced contemptuously through the hole in the tent, where Paul was now waving weakly at them, still lying in the grass. “You call that man a judge?” he sneered. “He is not fit to judge the worms beneath our feet!”  
  
“Couldn’t agree more,” Cecily said, once more under her breath.  
  
Nobody should have been able to hear, but Morgoth turned his gaze her immediately. It was hard to read a demon’s expression, given that his eyes were bottomless black holes set in a face whose features were hard to make out given they glowed with the shifting colours of a raging fire, but he looked as though he almost approved.  
  
“Er, well, luckily he wasn’t judging worms,” Mel said, trying to be placating. “He judges bakes, you see? We have nine bakers remaining here, all competing with their baking skills, and he was about to judge, well… the tart from which you sprang.”  
  
“Ah.” Morgoth looked down at the tart. He seemed deflated, almost, the fiery glow of his body dying down. “Not really much cause for judging souls, is it?”  
  
Mary put a gentle hand on the demon's elbow. "It is judging, however. Since Paul is now rather indisposed, would you care to judge the remainder of our bakes?"  
  
“Judging bakes?”  
  
“You could look at it as judging their souls as bakers,” Sue said, helpfully. “You don’t get to, er… what do you do when you judge a soul.”  
  
“Condemn them to eternal damnation,” Morgoth said, as if it were nothing at all.  
  
“Right. Well, you don’t get to condemn them to eternal damnation, but at the end of the day you do get to, er, banish one of them from the tent, if that helps?”  
  
Morgoth glowered as he considered it, but finally he shook out his wings, drew himself up to his full height - in fact grew, until his horns were brushing the bunting at the roof of the tent - and said, “I accept the task!”  
  
When he and Mary turned back to Cecily’s tart, Cecily rather wished that she could work out how to un-summon him. She hadn’t been looking forward to Paul’s judgement, but this really didn’t seem like it was any better. When Mary finished carving the tart, she frantically wondered if they were also carving up her best chance to send this demon back where he came from and get out of this alive.  
  
She still had enough regular fear left over to panic when Mary pulled an odd face at her first bite of the pie. Only for a moment, though, because all other thoughts were drowned out by Morgoth yelling “DELICIOUS!” in a voice that rumbled the ground beneath them. She was pretty sure she heard a tree crack outside. Perhaps this was, in fact, going to be Cecily’s week to triumph. And after this she certainly didn’t have to worry about the judges not taking any notice of her.


End file.
